Once

I keep forgetting to post this on the right day. This is almost a week old already

 

 Sunday, January 17, 2021 

I woke up to a cloudy, sullen sky before 6 this morning. I figured church would be cancelled but still got up before that was confirmed around 7. I had a blissful, quiet morning. The family all slept in and I made cocido and thought about gardening and sewing and even got some songs sung by myself. It started raining maybe around 0730 and was still raining when we left the yard around 1330. Not just drizzling either. I’d say about ¾ of the way along the line that starts at drizzling and ends at cats and dogs. Anyways. Our destination today was a Mennonite couple with 3 younger children. The wife can understand some English and Spanish but can’t talk it while the husband talks varying stages of both. We got a tour of his brother’s house that is in the making right beside theirs and then toured their own house that’s in the making a little ways down the road. The second one was grand. A dream house if there ever was one. A huge front entrance/formal dining room with a loft like second story around 2.5 of the sides. At this point there was no railing on the upstairs walkway so it was just open. The downstairs had 2 living rooms, a guest bedroom, big kitchen, a porch with a place for their barbeque, a huge laundry room with grand bathtub off of it and a sewing room. Between the sewing room and the stairs was a playroom with windows into the sewing room and the stairs to break up fights more efficiently. Upstairs were the 3 bedrooms, a room bigger than the bedrooms which apparently was a storage room, and a beautiful big porch that wrapped around one side. On the opposite side of the upstairs was another outside area that wasn’t a meant for a porch but they didn’t know what they were going to use it for. Almost the whole house (walls, and some ceilings) was covered in tile. Mostly muted, textured whites and creams, but the play room had 4 or 5 different colored patterns that all seemed to go together somehow. Eventually it came out that this lady got her ideas from Pinterest which is quite very uncommon among these Mennonites. 

This family seems discontented with the church they’re going to. The clothes they’re supposed to wear, the fact that children can’t go to church til they’re 12, those are a few minor things they don’t like. The man (I think his name is Johnny) and Eric talked about different verses and didn’t agree but he said he was going to study up on what Eric had said. Maybe we’ll see them in church one Sunday.   

 

Monday, January 18, 2021 

Karlins are getting company and need to use our van while they’re out so Eric and Rachelle and Tiago and Aubrey were gone into the afternoon, trading vehicles and doing some shopping. Christina went outside for some fresh air during school and returned with the request to have school outside. For recess, we found books and quiet places to read them and afterwards spread out a blanket and finished our morning outside. Ellie and I had some work to finish up after lunch and Christina cheered us up by promising a surprise dessert which turned out to be some very delicious chocolate cake which apparently had had a very dark surface until it was scraped off. It was, in fact, more delicious due to the fluffy top and the icing that were the result of this mishap.  I drove a lesson home using Spanish today. I recommend teaching your students (and yourself) another language so you can use the grammar of one language to teach the other. To, too, too and two are quite easy when you use the words a, tambien, demasiado and dos.   

 

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Bangladeshi food. Cream, cherry and Dulce de Leche filled donuts. Potato chorizo corn tacos. And the beetle that has been living in my drain finally gave in and died. Not sure if it was due to all the toothpaste and extra soap I used trying to kill him with cleanliness or if it was due to exhaustion from always have to climb up after being washed down. His body is resting on the rocks in my drain. If his friends and frienshaft don’t take care of him, I’ll have to bury him myself come morning.  

 

Wednesday, January 20, 2021 

Beetle’s best friend died of heartbreak right beside him overnight and I got to perform a double burial. I keep on understanding more and more on Bible Study. We’ve started sitting in the backyard of the house where Felicita used to live which is also the front yard of the one she now lives in. Her daughter and granddaughter are moving home from Asuncion and consequently she’s moving to the small house in the back. The yard is beautiful with plants everywhere and lots of shade for Bible Studies.  

 

Thursday, January 21, 2021

 Went to visit the Miller’s this afternoon. They’re an older Mennonite couple who speak English which felt almost refreshing. It’s kinda nice not to think about understanding what people are saying for a few hours. She fed us Kringel and cookies and Cinnamon rolls and ice-cream. Stopped at San Pedro here in town for supper later but it was raining so the girls couldn’t play on the globo locos. Those big bouncy things with air in them. I didn’t put ‘sadly’ in the last sentence because I am rather fond of rain and would have gladly run around in it. I got the hiccups just before we left and was the laughingstock of Tiago for awhile. Oh and that reminds me. We’re driving the truck around for awhile and the girls and I were all in the back this afternoon, with Tiago on my lap. For some reason he decided he was tired and gladly took his soother and lay down in my arms. It took awhile, but eventually he fell asleep for me! This is the guy who was freaked of me when I came. And this is the first time he’s fallen asleep in my arms. So I count that as quite a milestone. 

You can tell the moment you enter Mennonite-ville. The houses are larger than most Paraguayan houses, have a wraparound porch and numerous big shops and outbuildings. And plain, unmarked church and school buildings every few houses seems like. Some live right along the highway, but to reach most of them you travel a little or a long ways down a red dirt road, fields on either side, eventually roads branching off and suddenly you are at the first house and the other 30 or so come bang bang bang right after the other and they all look the same with their neat garden up front, car or buggy parked up front and the wraparound porch. Soon you’re out of the one village and after a bit you’re into the next. Some are more in clusters around a few corners in the road, some house stores. So far all the colonies confuse me. One thing I know, everybody knows everybody else. Well not really. But mention the Miller’s or Wolf’s or Zacharias’s and they all know who you mean. Ask where they live and they’ll tell you ‘Past where the Friesen’s used to live and it’s on the corner, beside Peter’s.‘ Well, I might be making things up, but think of how your grandparents of even great grandparents used to live and apply that to this place.   

 

Friday, January 22, 2021 

I was feeling very lethargic this afternoon after a short catnap when Sara showed up to buoy my spirits. Her brother who is a school teacher somewhere other then here in town is home in between jobs and came to visit Eric. So we got right down to business and Christina and Sara and I played Uno for most of the time. I thought I could beat her if we played the fast way of Uno using English but she still won. She did find out tho that I sometimes can understand more Spanish then I let on. When you know the root of a lot of verbs and basic pronouns and some nouns you can catch on to a lot.   

 

And today is Saturday, January 23, 2021 

Company coming at 6 but its 7 already. Quite normal but due to the fact that it’s been rainy all afternoon they might not show up??..  They showed up and we sat and visited and ate the cake they brought and drank coffee because it was too cold for terere because of the rain. The 10 year old boy played hide and seek and such games with the girls. They have a 16 year old girl and another boy who wasn’t here who drives a cool white VW bug.  

Tonight we have music to put us to sleep. Or keep us awake more like. Sitting in the quincho we had a hard time hearing the conversation and the music was across the street from us. Can’t imagine how their ears will feel after tonight. 

 I’m talking on the phone right now and trying to finish this so that’s why this might not make too much sense.   

Ciao,  Addie